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I've wondered if these "leaders" were just deeply disturbed before. Perhaps they are psychopathic? Something to chew on.
"The Psychopath Test": Madmen Among Us Sunday, May 8, 2011And now we need to get TSA into train traffic too? Nonsense! Get them out of business, pronto, and leave it to the professionals who did a good enough job (which is all that is guaranteed in the Constitution) for most of us before all the madness (purposive madness, many say) ensued! From Glenn Greenwald:The author of "The Men Who Stare at Goats" searches for the dangerous lunatics who may be running the world
Jon Ronson is a British journalist who specializes in hanging around with odd people who do odd things. The best-known of his works, "The Men Who Stare at Goats," about U.S. military programs to develop psychological and paranormal warfare techniques, was made into a Hollywood movie. Ronson has produced television and radio documentaries of his own on top of his print journalism, much of it about such cranks as David Icke (who contends that "the secret rulers of the world are giant, blood-drinking, child-sacrificing pedophile lizards that have adopted human form") or fringe-dwelling militants like Thom Robb of the KKK.
So it was only a matter of time before Ronson graduated from fraternizing with kooks to rubbing elbows with the officially mad, as he does in his new book, "The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry." While working on a story about a Swiss psychiatrist who anonymously sent elaborate puzzle books to several scientists, he became interested in how much the insane can affect the lives and behavior of the sane. Naturally, he went right out and purchased a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition, otherwise known as the DSM-IV). A hypochondriacal spiral soon followed. As an antidote, Ronson arranged an interview with an anti-psychiatry Scientologist. The Scientologist in turn introduced him to a man he calls Tony, then imprisoned in Broadmoor, an asylum for the criminally insane.
Tony was sharp-dressed, well-spoken and seemingly trapped in a Catch-22 situation where anything he did was interpreted as an indication that he should never be released into the general population. Convicted of savagely beating a homeless man, he claimed he'd tried to mitigate his sentence by simulating madness, "plagiarizing" statements from such cinematic lunatics as Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet" and Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange."
Tony was wrong about the sentencing, and Ronson was troubled by the results. It seemed to him that his new acquaintance was unjustly imprisoned, with very little hope of ever getting out. Or that's what Ronson thought until he spoke with a neurologist, who laughed and told him that Tony's whole routine -- from the snazzy suit to the winning manner -- was "classic psychopath." Then she told him about the Hare Checklist, "the gold standard for diagnosing psychopaths," devised by the Canadian psychologist Bob Hare. No. 1 on the list: "Glibness and superficial charm."
Ronson decided to book a spot in a three-day training course run by Hare (something of a guru in the field) and by the end of the weekend he was identifying possible psychopaths right and left, including a Vanity Fair critic who had "always been very rude about my television documentaries." Still, Ronson couldn't entirely withdraw his sympathy from Tony, who maintained, "Trying to prove you're not a psychopath is even harder than trying to prove you're not mentally ill." Although psychopaths are said to be devoid of empathy and remorse, they can be crafty, and are known to study the outward manifestation of emotions in order to ape them. Ronson himself had once interviewed the leader of a Haitian death squad -- certainly a psychopath -- and had watched in acute discomfort as the man obviously faked sobs of regret. Maybe Tony was just a better actor? Or maybe not.
That's how "The Psychopath Test" proceeds, with the excitable Ronson pinging wildly back and forth between finding psychopaths everywhere he looks (he's particularly concerned that many political and business leaders might meet the criteria) and questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis itself. He interviews "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, a notorious business executive famed for the relish with which he laid off tens of thousands of workers in the 1980s (a guy who comes across as pretty psychopathic) and a disgraced psychologist whose facile criminal profiling resulted in the incarceration of an innocent man while the real murderer was free to kill again.
Ronson's touch is light and he's not afraid to play the feckless neurotic for laughs, but that doesn't obscure the serious questions raise by his investigations. Psychiatric diagnoses (and, these days, the medications that follow) really can become fads, with certain experts suddenly deciding that multiple personality disorder or childhood bipolar disorder are far more common that ever before suspected. Ronson even finds the occasion for a little professional soul-searching; he accuses himself and other journalists of being the Goldilocks of craziness, seeking out people to write about who are just nuts enough to be colorful but not so disturbed that they're downright sad.
What "The Psychopath Test" is not, however, is conclusive; conclusiveness is pretty much the opposite of Ronson's brief in this outing. Much of the time, he leaves the reader remarkably free to draw his or her own conclusions by presenting certain facts while refraining from comment. For those willing to think for themselves, this makes for a refreshing change. There are some who may find Ronson's restraint unsatisfying, but in an age when the worst are filled with the passionate intensity of complete conviction, a little doubt might do us all some good.
So Al Qaeda breathes the word "trains" and Schumer jumps and demands the creation of a massive, expensive and oppressive new Security State program to keep thousands and thousands of people off trains. The "no-fly" list has been nothing short of a Kafkaesque disaster: with thousands of people secretly placed on it without any explanation or real recourse, oftentimes causing them to be stranded in faraway places and unable to return home.______________________To replicate that for trains - all because some documents mentioned them among thousands of other ideas Al Qaeda has undoubtedly considered over the years - is hysteria and ludicrous over-reaction of the highest order. Trains can obviously be attacked without boarding them (indeed, these documents apparently discussed tampering with the rails, which wouldn't require boarding the trains at all). And if there's a "no-ride" list for Amtrak, why not for subways and buses, too? If Al Qaeda is found to have discussed targeting restaurants, will we have a no-eat list? If Al Qaeda is found to have discussed targeting large intersections or landmarks, will we have a no-walk list? How about a no-shop list in response to the targeting of malls?
But this, more or less, encapsulates the U.S. response to Terrorism since 9/11: the minute Al Qaeda utters a peep about anything, the political class collectively jumps to restrict our freedoms, empower the Government, and bankrupt ourselves in self-destructive pursuit of the ultimate illusion: Absolute Security. Al Qaeda has caused us to do more harm to ourselves than it could have ever dreamed of imposing on its own. And even in death, Osama bin Laden continues to serve as the pretext for all of this.
That Barack Obama has continued the essence of the Bush/Cheney Terrorism architecture was once a provocative proposition but is now so self-evident that few dispute it (watch here as arch-neoconservative David Frum - Richard Perle's co-author for the supreme 2004 neocon treatise - waxes admiringly about Obama's Terrorism and foreign policies in the Muslim world and specifically its "continuity" with Bush/Cheney). But one policy where Obama has gone further than Bush/Cheney in terms of unfettered executive authority and radical war powers is the attempt to target American citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process. As The New York Times put it last April:
It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president. . . .
That Obama was compiling a hit list of American citizens was first revealed in January of last year when The Washington Post's Dana Priest mentioned in passing at the end of a long article that at least four American citizens had been approved for assassinations; several months later, the Obama administration anonymously confirmed to both the NYT and the Post that American-born, U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was one of the Americans on the hit list.
Yesterday, riding a wave of adulation and military-reverence, the Obama administration tried to end the life of this American citizen - never charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime - with a drone strike in Yemen, but missed and killed two other people instead:
A missile strike from an American military drone in a remote region of Yemen on Thursday was aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric believed to be hiding in the country, American officials said Friday.
The attack does not appear to have killed Mr. Awlaki, the officials said, but may have killed operatives of Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen.
The other people killed "may have" been Al Qaeda operatives. Or they "may not have" been. Who cares? They're mere collateral damage on the glorious road to ending the life of this American citizen without due process (and pointing out that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expressly guarantees that "no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law" - and provides no exception for war - is the sort of tedious legalism that shouldn't interfere with the excitement of drone strikes).
There are certain civil liberties debates where, even though I hold strong opinions, I can at least understand the reasoning and impulses of those who disagree; the killing of bin Laden was one such instance. But the notion that the President has the power to order American citizens assassinated without an iota of due process - far from any battlefield, not during combat - is an idea so utterly foreign to me, so far beyond the bounds of what is reasonable, that it's hard to convey in words or treat with civility.
How do you even engage someone in rational discussion who is willing to assume that their fellow citizen is guilty of being a Terrorist without seeing evidence for it, without having that evidence tested, without giving that citizen a chance to defend himself - all because the President declares it to be so? "I know Awlaki, my fellow citizen, is a Terrorist and he deserves to die. Why? Because the President decreed that, and that's good enough for me. Trials are so pre-9/11." If someone is willing to dutifully click their heels and spout definitively authoritarian anthems like that, imagine how impervious to reason they are on these issues.
And if someone is willing to vest in the President the power to assassinate American citizens without a trial far from any battlefield - if someone believes that the President has that power: the power of unilaterally imposing the death penalty and literally acting as judge, jury and executioner - what possible limits would they ever impose on the President's power? There cannot be any. Or if someone is willing to declare a citizen to be a "traitor" and demand they be treated as such - even though the Constitution expressly assigns the power to declare treason to the Judicial Branch and requires what we call "a trial" with stringent evidence requirements before someone is guilty of treason - how can any appeals to law or the Constitution be made to a person who obviously believes in neither?
What's most striking about this is how it relates to the controversies during the Bush years. One of the most strident attacks from the Democrats on Bush was that he wanted to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. One of the first signs of Bush/Cheney radicalism was what they did to Jose Padilla: assert the power to imprison this American citizen without charges. Yet here you have Barack Obama asserting the power not to eavesdrop on Americans or detain them without charges - but to target them for killing without charges - and that, to many of his followers, is perfectly acceptable. It's a "horrific shredding of the Constitution" and an act of grave lawlessness for Bush to eavesdrop on or detain Americans without any due process; but it's an act of great nobility when Barack Obama ends their lives without any due process.
Not even Antonin Scalia was willing to approve of George Bush's mere attempt to detain (let alone kill) an American citizen accused of Terrorism without a trial. In a dissenting opinion joined by the court's most liberal member, John Paul Stevens, Scalia explained that not even the War on Terror allows the due process clause to be ignored when the President acts against those he claims have joined the Enemy - and this was for a citizen found on an actual active battlefield in a war zone (Afghanistan) (emphasis added):
The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive. Blackstone stated this principle clearly: "Of great importance to the public is the preservation of this personal liberty: for if once it were left in the power of any, the highest, magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers thought proper … there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities. … To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom." . . . .
Subjects accused of levying war against the King were routinely prosecuted for treason. . . . The Founders inherited the understanding that a citizen's levying war against the Government was to be punished criminally. The Constitution provides: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort"; and establishes a heightened proof requirement (two witnesses) in order to "convic[t]" of that offense. Art. III, §3, cl. 1.
There simply is no more basic liberty than the right to be free from Presidential executions without being charged with - and then convicted of - a crime: whether it be treason, Terrorism, or anything else. How can someone who objected to Bush's attempt to eavesdrop on or detain citizens without judicial oversight cheer for Obama's attempt to kill them without judicial oversight? Can someone please reconcile those positions?
One cannot be certain that this attempted killing of Awlaki relates to the bin Laden killing, but it certainly seems likely, and in any event, highlights the dangers I wrote about this week. From the start, it was inconceivable to me that - as some predicted - the bin Laden killing would bring about a ratcheting down of America's war posture. The opposite seemed far more likely to me for the reason I wrote on Monday:
Whenever America uses violence in a way that makes its citizens cheer, beam with nationalistic pride, and rally around their leader, more violence is typically guaranteed. Futile decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may temporarily dampen the nationalistic enthusiasm for war, but two shots to the head of Osama bin Laden - and the We are Great and Good proclamations it engenders - can easily rejuvenate that war love. . . . We're feeling good and strong about ourselves again - and righteous - and that's often the fertile ground for more, not less, aggression.
The killing of bin Laden got the testosterone pumping, the righteousness pulsating, and faith in the American military and its Commander-in-Chief skyrocketing to all-time highs. It made America feel good about itself in a way that no other event has since at least Obama's inauguration; we got to forget about rampant unemployment, home foreclosures by the millions, a decade's worth of militaristic futility and slaughter, and ever-growing Third-World levels of wealth inequality. This was a week for flag-waving, fist-pumping, and nationalistic chanting: even - especially - among liberals, who were able to take the lead and show the world (and themselves) that they are no wilting, delicate wimps; it's not merely swaggering right-wing Texans, but they, too, who can put bullets in people's heads and dump corpses into the ocean and then joke and cheer about it afterwards. It's inconceivable that this wave of collective pride, boosted self-esteem, vicarious strength, and renewed purpose won't produce a desire to replicate itself. Four days after bin Laden is killed, a missile rains down from the sky to try to execute Awlaki without due process, and that'll be far from the last such episode (indeed, also yesterday, the U.S. launched a drone attack in Pakistan, ending the lives of 15 more people: yawn).
Last night, in a post entitled "Reigniting the GWOT [Global War on Terrorism]" - Digby wrote about why the reaction to the killing of bin Laden is almost certain to spur greater aggression in the "War on Terror," and specifically observed: "They're breathlessly going on about Al Qaeda in Yemen 'targeting the homeland' right now on CNN. Looks like we're back in business." The killing of bin Laden isn't going to result in a reduction of America's military adventurism because that's not how the country works: when we eradicate one Enemy, we just quickly and seamlessly find a new one to replace him with - look over there: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is the True Threat!!!! - and the blood-spilling continues unabated (without my endorsing it all, read this excellent Chris Floyd post for the non-euphemistic reality of what we've really been doing in the world over the last couple years under the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner).
A civil liberties lawyer observed by email to me last night that now that Obama has massive political capital and invulnerable Tough-on-Terror credentials firmly in place, there are no more political excuses for what he does (i.e., he didn't really want to do that, but he had to in order not to be vulnerable to GOP political attacks that he's Weak). In the wake of the bin Laden killing, he's able to do whatever he wants now - ratchet down the aggression or accelerate it - and his real face will be revealed by his choices (for those with doubts about what that real face is). Yesterday's attempt to exterminate an American citizen who has long been on his hit list - far from any battlefield, not during combat, and without even a pretense of due process - is likely to be but a first step in that direction.
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